A comparative study of medical students’ satisfaction towards learning between standardized patient and regular general patient treatment in the instruction provided at the Otolaryngology Outpatient Clinic, Phramongkutklao College of Medicine

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. Background: Currently, the instruction of 4th year medical students involves learning from general patients who walk in to OPD ENT but is limited by the number of patients. Therefore, a concept was created to study volunteers or standardized patients and assess the medical students' satisfaction level. Both methods comprised differing advantages and disadvantages without any previous study. Summary of work : The patients were divided in 2 groups; a general patient group and a standardized patient group regarding 12 diseases which were made by appointment. The standardized patients were without urgent conditions and approved as volunteers using circular appointment such as allergic rhinitis, nasal polyp etc. The medical students had to complete history taking and physical examination in both groups during alterative weeks under the medical instructors' control then evaluate satisfaction levels by completing a validated questionnaire and using focus group interviews. Summary of results and discussion: The medical students' satisfaction levels showed significant difference regarding standardized patients compared with regular general patients. Moreover, they were satisfied concerning the variety of diseases, that the patients could answer questions regarding their symptoms, could actively participate and were willing to be volunteers for the medical students. Questions involving motivational reinforcement for learning revealed no significant differences. The reason might be that the students had received sufficient knowledge from their classes. The focus group interviews indicated that some disease effects could not be observed at the appointment time, for instance, vertigo and sinusitis. However, the advantage was that the patients concurred admirably, described their histories clearly and complied with follow-up. Conclusion: The medical students had higher satisfaction levels with standardized patient learning than regularly general patient learning and preferred to experience a diversity of diseases. In addition, patients willingly concurred with the medical students' instructions. Take-home messages: Standardized patients are a proven benefit for medical students but without quantitative validation.